The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE-Main) will be held in February, March, April and May of 2021. With school syllabi having been reduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the JEE question paper pattern has also been changed to allow for more choice.
“This will give multiple opportunities to the candidates to improve their scores in the examination if they are not able to give their best in one attempt. In case, a candidate has a board examination in a particular month, or is unable to appear due to COVID-19, the candidate can choose a different month to take JEE (Main)-2021,” said Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Wednesday evening. The candidate’s highest score would be used for the entrance rankings.
The dates of the four sessions are: February 23-26, March 15-18, April 27-30, and May 24-28, according to the National Testing Agency (NTA), which will conduct the examination. Online applications can be submitted till January 16, with the application portal reopening after each session.
Changes in question paper
There would be several changes in the question paper pattern. “Keeping in mind various decisions taken by various boards across the country regarding amendments to the syllabus, the NTA has decided that the question paper will contain 90 questions, in which the candidate will have to attempt a total of 75 questions,” said the testing agency. The Central Board of Secondary Education had reduced its syllabus by 30% due to the lockdown, and other State boards have also left out different sections of their syllabi.
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Every subject would have two sections. One would have multiple choice questions, while the second would require students to fill in a numerical value. The choice would be given in this second section, which would also not have any negative marking, said the NTA. The examination would be a computer-based test only, except for the drawing test for B.Arch entrance, which would be conducted in pen and paper mode.
In 13 different languages
The examination would be held in 13 different languages for the first time, drawing from the National Education Policy’s emphasis on linguistic diversity. English, Hindi and Urdu would be available in all the States. Other regional languages -- Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu -- would be available in their respective States.
JEE-Main is conducted for admission to undergraduate engineering and architecture programmes at the National Institutes of Technology and other Central and State institutions. It is also used as an eligibility test for JEE-Advanced, which is conducted for admission to the elite Indian Institutes of Technology.
